A bogus litmus test for Latino pols

Express-News Editorial Board

Published 8:31 pm, Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais /Associated Press

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Former San Antonio mayor, now Housing and Urban Development Secretary (HUD) Julian Castro, right, is expected to announce his endorsement of Hillary Clinton when she visits San Antonio on Thursday, Oct. 15, 2015. Castro is widely expected to be on Clinton’s short list of potential picks for a VP running mate, should she win the nomination. less

Former San Antonio mayor, now Housing and Urban Development Secretary (HUD) Julian Castro, right, is expected to announce his endorsement of Hillary Clinton when she visits San Antonio on Thursday, Oct. 15, ... more

Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais /Associated Press

A bogus litmus test for Latino pols

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There it was again. Yet another article that put a focus on the Spanish-speaking ability of a Latino thought of as a candidate for national office. This time it was on a repeat victim.

Julián Castro, former San Antonio mayor and now Housing and Urban Development Secretary, is being talked up as a potential candidate to fill the No. 2 spot on a Hillary Clinton Democratic ticket. Sen. Ted Cruz, who is running for president and whose father is a Cuban immigrant, also was a recent target. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is also running.

The recent article, by Margaret Talev for Bloomberg Politics, pretty much led with a description of an encounter between Castro and a Spanish-speaking advocate for farmworkers. The conversation was in Spanish.

In the article, Lucas Benitez dismissed “digs that Castro’s language skills aren’t as good as Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine’s, the other most often speculated-upon candidate for the second half of a prospective ticket.”

Media colleagues: Can we please give this a rest.

On Friday, Ruben Navarrette, in a column on our pages, essentially asked, what does it matter whether a candidate, a totally acculturated U.S. citizen, speaks the language of a forebear?

It doesn’t. Identification with a candidate will occur on a much higher plane.

Castro — and his twin brother, U.S. Rep. Joaquín — fit well into the American narrative. Their grandmother was a Mexican immigrant and they grew up on the highly Latino West Side of San Antonio, where a melding of cultures makes for something quintessentially and authentically American.

They are, for crying out loud, Stanford University and Harvard Law School graduates. And Cruz, who had to undergo an embarrassing grilling — embarrassing mostly for Bloomberg Politics’ Mark Halperin — on his Latino credentials, is a Princeton University and Harvard Law grad.

If Spanish-speaking ability were part of Clinton’s vetting process for the person a heartbeat away from the presidency, her litmus test would be horribly askew. And if we’re going to demand bilingualism of Latino candidates, demand it of all candidates.

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Sometimes being savvy enough to represent Americans will come from life experience, sometimes from pure empathy and sometimes just from being intelligent. Most often, from all three.

In San Antonio, a language other than Spanish is spoken in roughly 45 percent of households, nearly 35 percent in Texas. Si, hablamos español. But if San Antonio and Texas didn’t have a Spanish litmus test with either Castro or Cruz, neither should the rest of the nation.